


It Happened During Paperman

by coconutcluster



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:34:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25621441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coconutcluster/pseuds/coconutcluster
Summary: roman is a ray of sunshine and virgil is a simp
Relationships: Anxiety | Virgil Sanders/Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders
Comments: 9
Kudos: 133





	It Happened During Paperman

**Author's Note:**

> hello all. it's been a while since i've posted to ao3 and for that i'm sorry - life in a pandemic is kind of constantly draining, as i'm sure you all know, and writing ao3-worthy fics has been difficult. however! if you'd like to see shorter and kind of more fun stuff from me as well as check to see that i am not, in fact, awol from the face of the earth, please feel free to hop over to my tumblr (@coconut-cluster) where i post a lot of random snippets, headcanons, au ideas, the likes. hope you're all doing well and taking care of yourselves. keep those lights shining strong <3

Virgil’s immediate conclusion to his current dilemma was, reasonably, that he was dying. 

Granted, that was his immediate conclusion to a lot of things - like the time he ate a couple bites of ice cream and then realized it was one day past its ‘best by’ date and he was positive he could feel his organs shutting down, or that time he had a little bit of a headache and instinctually ‘knew’ his brain was swelling and his time had come, or the time he slept in later than usual and got confused by the sunshine and just assumed he’d begun his ascension toward the light. And _sure_ , none of those were what a perfectly sane or levelheaded person would call reasonable (especially since Virgil was a metaphysical personification of anxiety and probably couldn’t actually die anyway). But this time was different. 

The evening had started normally: he ate dinner with the others (he’d been trying to get out of room more often), then chilled in the living room for a while, and then a while turned into a _while_ , and then it was dark outside and definitely not evening anymore. All very typical. He stayed up late all the time, not a big deal.

What wasn’t entirely typical was the fact that Roman was also there. 

He’d come down a bit ago, wide awake despite his sweatshirt and pajama pants, singing under his breath and bopping his head along to the tune as he made his way toward the kitchen. It took him a good minute and a half to notice Virgil sitting on the back of the couch; when he finally looked up from the mug and hot chocolate packet he’d set on the counter, he literally jumped. Like, bad-sitcom-character-shock jumped. 

“You’re up late,” he’d said after a moment of vigorous blinking to process Virgil’s shadowed figure. 

Virgil just blinked back. “I’m always up late.”

“…Fair enough.” 

Roman looked down, drumming his fingers against the counter, contemplating the buzzing silence between them. It went on just long enough for Virgil to suspect maybe he’d surprised the prince into forgetting his errand entirely, but then, a moment later, Roman glanced back up with raised eyebrows. “Want some hot chocolate?”

So there they were, sitting on the couch with hot chocolate and the Disney Short Films Collection playing on the TV (on low volume so they didn’t wake any of the others, considering it was now well past midnight). And while, yeah, it wasn’t typical - Virgil knew Roman didn’t sleep a lot, but he didn’t usually come down til early in the morning - it also wasn’t unpleasant, per se. Virgil definitely wasn’t complaining, anyway; the hot chocolate was great, and he was much more of a sucker for the sweet side of Disney than he’d ever admit out loud, and Roman provided snide commentary under his breath that actually made Virgil laugh. All in all, as atypical as it was, the moment was nice. 

The problem, then - the whole “he was dying” situation - arose during Paperman. 

He was very aware how much Roman loved Paperman. He could see the appeal; it was a cutesy little short about a by-chance romance, with a climactic pursuit and happy ending, lots of focus on music and whatever. (Virgil mostly liked the part where George, the main character, failed at throwing paper airplanes for a full thirty seconds and just hit his head against the windowpane in exasperation. Really resonated with him.) It made total sense why the short would be a favorite of Roman, with his affinity for sappy romances and fate and all that. 

So when Virgil heard a wistful sigh near the end of the short, he wasn’t surprised. And then he looked over. 

Roman had a very specific smile - he had a lot of smiles, obviously, but a lot of them were as big and bright and enthusiastic as he was, and Virgil saw those smiles a lot, so he was pretty much used to them by now. But this one - this very specific smile - was different. It was small, and soft, and the look in Roman’s eyes was a sparkling admiration that was just so unlike his usual loud excitement; Virgil couldn’t tell if the lack of his prince uniform was the kicker, or the fact that his expression was painted so deeply wistful, but whatever it was, it was a quiet thing that utterly transformed him. His eyes and the bridge of his nose and his cheekbones were awash with the blue light of the TV screen, and his smile was longing, and he was ridiculously beautiful in the way a freaking Renaissance painting is beautiful and Virgil’s heart was about to fail. 

And despite his first instinct, he knew he wasn’t dying. He was anxious, not stupid, and it was obvious that what was happening in his chest wasn’t a heart attack or cardiac arrest - but the rush of his heartbeat was almost overwhelming, to the point that it was much easier to just assume he was on his deathbed. In the midst of his panic, he didn’t know whether to feign some random affliction to escape to his room, escape the rush and the heat in his face, or just sit and stare at Roman’s profile, study it until he had the view memorized, etched into his brain to return to whenever it struck him to do so. 

He didn’t know which to do, but he could feel himself leaning toward one more than the other. 

So after a second, he just let his brain believe he was dying. He lied to himself directly and unabashedly, and he decided, well, if he’s dying, there’s nothing he can do about it now. Might as well just live his last moments in awe and reverence and whatever other cheesy emotion he could put a name to as he watched Roman’s eyes flicker over the screen, soft and sparkling and yearning and ridiculously pretty. Might as well.

(He wasn’t dying, but if he was… it was a beautiful way to go.)


End file.
